The Lantern Restaurant & Bar – The Ritz-Carlton, Bangalore

2 Reviews on “The Lantern Restaurant & Bar – The Ritz-Carlton, Bangalore”

• Aditya S

  In the quest to have something Oriental and authentic over the weekend, we chose Lantern. After all, how bad can a restaurant at the Ritz Carlton screw up (The answer – Pretty Bad!!!)Reservation through Zomato was seamless. We were ushered in to the basement into a slightly cramped up space. The restaurant has 3 seating zones – smoking by the pool, private dining as well as non-smoking interior. Ambience was tacky and out of place for an Oriental food joint and did nothing to evoke Oriental memories.We started with ordering the Lung Fung Crab soup, Crab meat+Prawn Xiao Long Bao and the Baked Chicken Puff. After a long wait of 25-30 mins, we were served the Xiao Long Bao. We were wondering why the dim sum was served before soup, however hunger pangs had taken over and we started with it. The dim sum wrapper was quite thick and the filling was barely there – super disappointing start where we had to chew up the plasticky dim sum. (1.5/5)The baked chicken puff followed and it was a step up over the botched up dim sum. The chicken filling was good while the puff pastry could definitely have been much more crisp and much much more flaky – missing the Hallmark of a great puff. (2.5/5)The Lung Fung soup we ordered never arrived and it was missed out by the staff taking the order who rudely never even came back to the table. Another lady to whom we raised the issue apologized and attended to our table for the rest of the day.We proceeded to order a Burnt Garlic Rice with egg along with Kung Pao chicken. The burnt garlic rice was very average and had very few bits of burnt garlic. The garlic wasn’t making its presence felt while the overall quantity was not even sufficient for one. (2/5)The disaster of the night had to be the Kung Pao chicken though. The chicken was finely diced up but the sauce was a sticky, gooey saccharine mess. Too sweet to accompany any fried rice and extremely tart, acidic that your palate is overwhelmed by the sweet taste after a few bites. It tasted and felt like Dates molasses and was definitely not Oriental. I do hope this is a one-off and Ritz doesn’t serve such bad food on a regular basis. (1/5)The redeeming factor though for the night was the Chilled Pumpkin Puree served with Tender Coconut ice cream. Plating was nothing fancy but the taste was brilliant – light perfect whiff of pumpkin accompanied by the tenderness of coconut with the right amount of sweet. It evoked memories of South Indian sweets that combined milk and rice flour. We repeated this again as it was quite brilliant. (4.5/5)Finally while paying the tab, I was wondering why we didn’t stick to Yauatcha if we wanted to go fancy Oriental. We could at least have had high quality authentic food, with filling quantities and much better service. Maybe a lesson or two for Lantern to learn from there.

  December 8, 2019, 7:58 am

  Log in to Reply
• Namratha.kota

  Lantern is a must try for Chinese food lovers and perfect place for date night! The ambience is very classy and the food is just delicious! For veg lovers Edamame wrap is a must try. Veg Shanghai dimsums, chicken shanghai dim sums were really tasty aswell. For the mains we ordered fresh and tasty gravy with schezwan noodles. It is one of the best Chinese restaurants in Bangalore. Even though it’s on the expensive side, it’s totally worth it!Ambience 5/5Food 5/5Service 5/5#ritzcarlton #lantern #chinese #foodie

  November 25, 2019, 12:06 pm

  Log in to Reply